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Retro crisps.

I am sat here eating a packet of these at the moment. My keyboard is getting a little bit greasy and I will probably have to shake the laptop later. I am not really a lover of snacks, but I do love these. I love the fact that the crisps are lovely and crunchy and a decent size - they look golden and attractive and are well cooked. When you bite into them there is a very distinctive snap that you don't always get from the cheaper brands. Of course the most fun part is the finding that little salt packet. It is somewhat reminiscent of the toy at the bottom of the cereal packet (yes I am that old) - there is always a little bit of relief when you discover the little blue packet. You can also get quite excited if occasionally you get two of them and disappointed if there isn't one. However the crisps do taste OK without salt and I prefer dipping them 'saltless' as the naked taste of the crisp works very well with homemade dips and sauces. Being able to put as much or s little salt on the crisps is a great boon for anyone wanting the convenience of a snack, but without the salt or sodium load. They aren't too bad calorie wise either 128kcal for 24g pack. These are definitely retro crisps but am I the only one that thinks there used to be more in a packet when they were made by Smiths?

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So glad I've found these again as I like them.

On a recent bus journey I watched a lady open a packet of these on the bus and proceed to take the salt out and add it to the crisps. I smiled to myself as these bring back memories from my childhood. A couple weeks later i came across the multi packs of these in my local Coop for £1 offer price so I snapped them up, not all of them just one multi pack.

I had no idea they still made them but found out since that Smiths was taken over by Walkers and they relaunched them back in 2003 as salt & shake rather then salt n shake. The packets are still white with blue and red detail on them. can't believe they have been around for the last 10 years and I've only just seen them again.

Frank Smith was the original founder of these crisps and sold them in pubs around parts of London, they are plain crisps as they are now and they would provide the customers with a salt cellar to add their own salt but they kept running out so he had the idea to add the special blue packet of salt into the crisps. I didn't actually know this information but read it on the back of the crisp packet.

So you are getting a bag of plain crisps but inside each one there is a small rectangular blue paper packet which contains salt to add to your crisps. You simply rip it sprinkle it and shake the pack to coat the crisps unless you prefer plain crisps which i think are rare to find. I love these and find them quite a quirky idea. The salt in the packs is not table salt but a more coarse salt so you can clearly see it on your crisps and also feel it on your fingers when you've finished eating them.

The average price of these in the supermarkets is £1.68 and currently most stores appear to have a 3 for £4 offer on too.

Not too keen at the fat content but if you look at it another way they are 91.6% fat free.Give them a try if you haven't to make your own opinion but I will keep buying these now I've found them again,

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The low salted crisp

This is one of the UK oldest crisps. These crisps were originally manufactured by the Smiths Snackfood Company, the brand is now owned by Walkers.

Salt "n" Shake is known for the blue sachet containing 0.6g of salt allowing you to add the salt to your taste. The packaging is quite simple but eye catching. The packet is white with a blue diamond shape in the middle with 'Salt "n" Shake and a cartoon image of the blue salt sachet. Above the word salt is a red banner that has written inside 'Originally Smiths'

To add the salt you first have to find the packet within the crisps once found rip across the top and shake the salt over the crisps, to make sure all the crisps are covered and the salt has not just settled on the top grab the top of the packet and give the packet a good shake. Salt "n" Shake packets come in a few different ways you can by the individual 30g packs or they come in a multi pack of 6. You are able to order them in larger quantities online where you can order multi packs of 48.

There are only three ingredients in these crisps and they are Potatoes, Sunflower Oil (35%), Salt (In Sachet). Prices on these crisps vary from shop to shop. The best price I have found is for a multi pack of six and that was £1 from Poundland but they are not that much more in the supermarkets as they as about £1.48

Also sen on Ciao.co.uk

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A concept crisp that takes you back to a time when crisps were not pre-flavoured.

I remember when these crisps used to be manufactured Salt and Shake. That was many years ago and the basic design of the packet has not changed much since then which, in my opinion, is a good thing because it reflects the age of the concept back when crisps did come ready flavoured. The concept of the 'salt n shake' has been copied by supermarket chains like ASDA and Tesco which have their own variations on the product. I'm not sure who this product is aimed at. Some would argue dieters who want to control their salt intake. Others would argue that their aimed at a more aged consumer. But whoever they're aimed at they must sell reasonably well for this crisp to remain on the market and to be copied by others. Personally, I like these crisps. They seem to differ from Walker's Ready Salted in some way which I can't describe. One little flaw that persits with the packaging is the inclusion of the little blue packet of salt. Sometimes, it easily accessable at the beginning of the packet. At other times you have to empty the contents of the packet just to reach it which can be problematic if you don't have a clean surface to empty your crisps on to.

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One of Briains oldest crisp

Salt & Shake is a crisp product that is now produced by walkers (like 99% of all other crisps) but used to be produced by Smith's (who also used to do Frazzles).

Apparently Salt & Shake is one of Britain's oldest crisps with sales dating back all the way to the 1920's, when the salt shakers Frank Smith provided (Frank Smith being the original creator) in the pubs in which they were sold kept running out, he resolved to provide a small packet of salt in each bag.

The crisps come in a distinctive white packet, a blue diamond with the products name written within it is printed on the front. The blue diamond represents the little blue sachet of salt inside (the sachet is the same size, shape and colour as the little packets that used to contain money during walkers 1990's cash competition).

The crisps themselves are absolutely standard walkers fare, and in classic style you don't get many to a pack (bags are a little less than half full).

The sachets do contain a good amount of salt and the process of adding your own is unique and kind of a novelty. You can even abstain from adding any salt at all if you wish, while a bit blander it's always nice to have the choice.

If you are very salt conscious but don't want to eat the crisps completely naked (the crisps that is, not you) you could try sprinkling a little chili/curry powder or paprika on them, kind of like a blank canvas.

If you're used to walkers crisps then you won't find anything different about the taste once the salts been added, it's just a bit of a novelty, but having the salt in a seperate sachet is very good from a health point of view as well as for people who just plain don't like salt.

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Would recommend

Salt and shake is a unique snack where the consumer adds his/her salt to the crisps as opposed to "ready salted", this allows the person to add as little or as much as they want, or even none at all. The concept first came about in 1920's London, but salt and shake stopped when "ready salted" was introduced, however due to popular demand they returned many years later.

The main advantage has to be the choice given to the consumer by letting them decide how much salt they want to put on, for people on sodium restricted diets this finally allowed them to eat crisps without putting their health at risk. Aside from that they taste just like ready salted crisps when you put in the full amount of salt (0.6g).

Overall these are exactly the same as ready salted but with the added beenfit of being able to add ass much or as litte as you wish. The fun of adding the salt itself is what draws many people to buy this, and also the exitment of sometimes getting 2 or more sachets due to factory error.

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Not what i remembered, very disappointing

I think I was on a nostalgia trip when I purchasd these, I didnt even know they still made them, I must admit to being a Walkers fan.

I purchased these at 43p a bag on a recent outing to Tesco, I though they were a little expensive considering theres only 30g in the bag and the salt equates to 2g of that ( I weighed it)

On opening they looked fairly dull and not at all appertising, instead of the usual aroma of the cheese and onion or the salt and vinega, there was a fried potato smell and nothing else. I immediately thought, I`ll pop one in the mouth while I open the salt. Uckkk what a mistake. It was a crisp no flavouring and to be quite honest, with a greasy feeling. I opened my little sachet, tipped my salt into my crisp bag and proceeded to shake my crisp bag as fast as I could.

After shaking , I was a little disappointed, I dont remember there being so little in a bag, or have time lessened my memory, anyhow on I went to consume my bag. Some crisps were over salted, some wasnt salted, and some were half and half, but I ate through to the end , then the favourite bit, tip the packet out and savour the crumbs, great ! a mouthful of salt.

To say I was disappointed is an understatement, crisps have moved on so far, salt n shake, have stayed the same and I for one wont be having anymore of them

In a typicle 30g packet you`ll find

Ingredients========

PotatoesSunflower Oil 35%Salt (in sachet) add as much or little as you want

There suitable for vegetarians and coeliacs and contain no artificial flavours

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Sprinkling your own salt is kinda fun.

I will never pretend that I'm not a sucker for marketing - surely that must be why I keep buying Salt & Shake crisps. Okay, yes, they're nice crisps. And I usually only buy them if they're on special. But to be honest, crisps WITHOUT salt are fairly boring, so when I open a packet of these, I know in advance that I'm going to tip the entire sachet of salt into the packet. I also know that most of it won't stick to the crisps, but wind up tucked in the corners of the packet instead. The salt grains are fairly big, and they tend to just bounce off the crisps... if they do stick, they're not evenly distributed across the crisp and you get either nothing or a blast of salt all at once. The crisps themselves seem slightly extra-greasy compared to regular pre-salted crisps - perhaps an effort to help the salt stick to them. Why do I keep buying them? Basically, I think, it's marketing. I like the idea of a little packet of flavouring that I tip onto the crisps. I like the idea that I'm in charge of how salty my crisps are. I like the story printed on the back of the packet about the enterprising gentleman who kept losing his salt cellars to opportunistic customers, and struck on the idea of including a little twist of salt in the packets instead. And I like the relatively plain, blue-and-white packaging. So when I'm in a bit of a whimsical mood, I buy these crisps. Like I said - marketing sucker.

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A non-ready salted crisp

I have just finished tucking in to a pack of Walker's Salt and Shake, and thought I would share the experience with you. I bought the crisps a few nights ago in Asda, they are in the 3 for £3 range of multipacks - this is a long term offer until at least 31/12/09.

What are they all about?:The history behind the crisps, if you didn't know or haven't seen the packets yet, is that in the 20s Frank Smith sold plan crisps in North London pubs. He provided salt cellars so that consumers could season the crisps as they liked, but the salt cellars disappeared as quick as the crisps, so he decided to add a little blue sachet of salt in each pack. The crisps were originally Smiths, but Walkers are now the brand name, although unusually the packaging acknowledges the original manufacturer.

Directions:You open the heat sealed packet and dig around for the blue sachet, remove this, give it a tap to make sure all the salt has moved away from the end you are about to open and then you tear a strip off the sachet. You pour the salt in to the bag of crisps (as little or as much as you like) and then you close the pack with your hand and give it a shake - hence the name, salt and shake.

Value for money:At 3 multipacks for £3 you can't really go wrong, much cheaper than buying single packets in a shop (they are 50p a pack in the vending machine at work), and they are great to add to a lunch box.

Overall:The salt sachet is a little bit of a novelty to me. It provides no great function, as I could buy Walkers Ready Salted crisps, or if I was trying to control my salt intake, I would buy unsalted crisps. These just remind me of being young, and they do admittedly taste great.

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Stash it!

Description: Walkers Salt & Shake crisps come with their own sachet of salt so that you can add as liitle or as much as you like to your crisps, perfect if you are on a low salt diet.

These crisps are totally plain, so you can add your own salt (provided in each pack in a small blue sachet) according to taste. They come in white packets with a blue label saying "Walkers Salt & Shake" on the front. They have been around for ages (I remember them as a child when they were made by Smiths) so chances are that you have seen them or tried them.

A 30g bag of these crisps costs around £0.45 and you can also buy them in multi packs from supermarkets. Having said that, these seem to be around less and less and I don't see them nearly as often as I used to.

The crisps themselves are always golden and light. They also smell really fresh, as soon as you open the pack, you can smell them. The amount of salt that I add depends on my mood, sometimes I eat them completely plain because they do taste fab just on their own. But then sometimes I add most of or even all of the salt, and love them that way too! It is great to have the choice and be able to eat them exactly as I want.

Nutritional values are as follows;

Per bag130 kcal12.0g carbohydrate0.1g of which sugars8.4g fat

Okay, so crisps are never going to be good for you, but as with most things, eaten in moderation can be a tasty treat. The fresh crunchiness of these means they are always good, whether alone, or on a cheese and salad cream (Heinz of course!) sandwich.

I definitely recommend these crisps, they are one of my favourites and ever pack reminds me of eating them as a child. It is a shame that they don't seem as available as they used to, but worth buying when you spot them!

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just as good as I remember.

As both my daughters no longer live at home permanently I've cut down on my purchases of biscuits & crisps because I know I'll 'pig out' on them in the evenings when watching TV! However I wouldn't be popular if I didn't have them in the cupboard waiting for them on their regular visits.

I'm constantly surprised when I buy crisps to see how expensive they are becoming as I'm sure they only cost a few pence a few years ago? - so I'm always on the look out for branded crisps when they're on offer. I've seen 24g packets of Walker's Salt n'Shake for 45p per packet so was pleased to see Iceland had them on offer (2/11) - 3 packs of 6 for £3.50 = 19.4p to my reckoning?

They stand apart from other Walker's multi-buy crisps as they're not foil wrapped & have the old Smith's colours (blue & white with a dash of red) which reminded me of childhood... I just hoped they tasted the same as when Smith's made them & I have to say I wasn't disappointed.

The tasty, crunchy crisps are kept fresh by the heat-sealed bag & I was pleased to find that there were very few crumby bits at the bottom. My daughter & I found that the crisps were fairly uniform in size, there were no chewy or burnt ones & the colour of each was the lovely golden brown I'd remembered. It was good to eat crisps that are made from potato & sunflower oil & not flavoured therefor not leaving an aftertaste in the mouth.

The best thing about these crisps has to be the bag of salt though - such a good idea! I remember when they used to be twisted at the top but now they come in (a rather fiddly) blue sachet. peronally I found the sachet contained just the right amount of salt for my liking but I guess you could retain & add your own sea salt/ low salt or extra salt depending on your preference. There's something quite satisfying about shaking the bag & getting the lovely waft of 'proper' crisps - yum.

Unfortunately crisps aren't healthy as we know so I reluctant to read the clear nutritional information until I'd enjoyed a packet - just to let you know a bag contains 130 calories & 8.4g fat - so I'm rationing myself.

summary~- lovely colour.- great texture.- not too greasy or crumby.- taste like 'proper' crisps.- just enough salt in the sachet for me.- too moreish.- not the cheapest crisps around but found a good offer.

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There's a reason Salt'n'Shake crisps have been going for (?) hundreds of years

'Salt and Shake' crisps, that stalwart survivor from the 1930s (or whenever it was that crisps were first invented, because the brand is so ancient that you often get 'Salt & Shake' crisps turning up in 'how-we-used-to-live' museum dioramas, and such like) used to be one of my favourite brands, but it's been literally years since I've seen them in the shops. Probably this has something to do with the (British) company that made them, Smith's Crisps, having been taken over by global food multimegaconglomerate Walkers Corporation, the bods behind such transatlantic treats as 'Doritos' etc.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see a multi-pack containing six bags of the crisps formerly known as 'Smiths Salt & Shake' flavour selling at Tesco's the other day. They cost around the £1.20 - £1.40 mark, so were pretty reasonable really. The packaging was quite clever - they'd retained the blue and white original 'Smith's' colouring and also added a helpful note stating that although these were now made by Walkers, Smith's crisps is what they used to be.

Despite their apparent absence from the shops recently they are exactly as I remembered. They are utterly plain crisps, thick-ishly cut so they have a fantastic textural 'crunch' and very oily (this must help hold the salt if / when you put the salt on them). They don't have even a bit of salt to flavour them until you sprinkle on the contents of the 'little blue salt bag' which is included inside each packet. The salt in the blue packet is of a special consistency also; the individual grains are fairly large and round-ish and there is a generous amount of salt provided. If you put all the contents of the salt bag on - and frankly, is there anyone out there who buys them but doesn't? - these crisps get very, deliciously salty especially towards the bottom of the bag, and are thus not at all recommended for those on a low-sodium diet.

You'd think the crisps would settle in their packets during transport, but no, as I remember from the old days, if you open a bag from the bottom end instead of the top, the minor (very easily resolvable) difficulty you'd encounter in locating the 'little blue salt bag' among all the crisps still holds true. In some way the people who make these ensure that each little blue salt bag is always to be found right near the top of the crisps (assuming you've opened them from the right way up). I've often wondered - how on earth do they do that? Especially how did they do that in the old days? I just don't know. These days it's probably something with Computers, (or transient waves of Secret Anti-Gravity Technology or something like that).

Each individual multi-pack bag contains 28g of crisps which unfortunately I find is not quite enough, because as I've mentioned, these snacks when fully seasoned are extremely salty, and very, very oily, and so eating more than a bag of them at one sitting is always a bad idea.

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Salted or unsalted, you choose. Me, I'll choose another bag next time

My latest raid of the work snack machine yielded a packet of Walkers "Originally Smiths Salt and Shake crisps". The 30g bag of crisps cost 45p, same as all the other crisps in the machine.

These appear to be a rebranded version of the good old salt and shake crisps with the little blue sachets that were popular when I was little in the late 1980s. The back of the packet has a little history of the crisps, which were apparently originally sold by a Frank Smith in the 1920s in Cricklewood.

Just like I remembered, the crisps come with a little blue sachet full of quite a coarse grain salt. You then sprinkle as much as you want it into the bag, shake it up and eat the crisps. Or if you are me, you accidentally toss the crisps half way around the room through clumsiness. After that, I peered in to the remains of the bag and saw the salt stuck to the side and bottom of the crisp packet and not much on the crisps themselves.

===What was it like to eat?===These tasted like unflavoured crisps that had got the odd bit of salt put on them. Which is, after all, exactly what they were. The texture was crisp and crunchy and they had a tendency to get stuck in the teeth. They looked a little bit underdone compared with my usual crisps, but that could just be the much paler colour of the crisps because they don't have toppings and haven't been artificially dyed a bright colour; they didn't taste underdone though. They were reasonably filling for an afternoon snack, but not a suitable replacement for dinner.

===Ingredients===These crisps are very basic in their ingredients - just potatoes, sunflower oil and salt, which is provided as a separate sachet. At first glance, that sounds almost healthy in the lack of colourings, flavourings, preservatives etc. until I see that it's a huge 35% sunflower oil.

===Nutrition===The 30g bag has 162 kcal in it - about normal for a small bag of crisps. However, it has a whopping 10.5g of fat, so I won't be having that too often. The sachet has 0.2g of sodium (there is none in the crisps themselves), again, not the healthiest thing for me to be eating, but not too much ended up on the crisps, so it probably wasn't as high as the pack suggested. And you could always leave it off if you aren't allowed salt. The pack has a sign saying it is suitable for vegetarians and coeliacs, but it doesn't have an allergy panel to tell you what other ingredients were manufactured on the same machines.

===The look and feel of the product===What I remember of these crisps from when I was little was the little blue sachet of flavouring. I don't remember anything much of the packaging except I think it was white and blue and a fairly square bag, so I'm not sure if that has changed much since then. The pack is now a white colour with a blue diamond on the front with the brand logo in white. The pack has the same rectangular proportions as other Walkers crisps. There is a little logo of a smiling running salt sachet on the front, which is a bit creepy.

===Summary===A bit bland for my taste, but reasonably filling. I'd eat them again if I were hungry, but only once I've tried (and reviewed) the other six flavours in the snack machine first.

Review may be reposted elsewhere

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just dont work

Walkers salt and shake was a product that I remember coming out quite a few years ago now as a kind of new, old concept, basically bringing back the idea that it was good to have to add your own salt to your crisps.

They came in packets just like normal crisps did, and you could also buy them in multipacks too however instead of being ready salted, or flavoured crisps, they were basically plain crisps and you had a small sachet of salt provided with the packet so you could add your own salt.

I think the reason why these didn't work for me was that I don't find anything wrong with the concept of buying crisps already salted or flavoured. Also when you added the salt and shook them they just didn't taste right, they didn't taste the same as the normal ready salted crisps they do.

I also didn't get a good spread of salt on the crisps too, no matter how much I shook them id always find the salt stick the some crisps, mainly the ones when I poured the sachet out and then there would be no salt for the ones at the bottom of the pack even if I shook, and shook them.

As a concept, its not a bad idea, and if you only want a little bit of salt then perhaps its good for you but if you like normal crisps any way then there's really no point in these.

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.

Perhaps a bit of a boring Crisp choice, but I love Ready Salted Crisps. So what are these Crisps and are they any different than standard Ready Salted Crisps?

Well the Crisps come in a bag with only a flavour sachet in them. So they are just plain Potato Crisps, and they are quite nice with no flavouring on them. You get a little Blue Sachet of Salt within the pack and the idea is to rip the top off the the sachet, pour the Salt in and shake it all about! Although the Salt sachet looks tiny, and you can see through the pack that it is only about half full, when it coats the Crisps it coats them alright. The Crisps are slightly greasy, and weather that makes the Salt stick to them a bit better i'm not sure, but you get an even enough coating of Salt granuals over the Crisps.

Most of the Crisps in the pack are quite large, but obviously you get some smaller and broken Crisps as usual.

I've only seen these recently in 6 bag Multipacks and they cost around £1.40 These are made by Walkers, so can often be on certain Suermarket deals to mix and match with other Walkers Multipacks.

The packaging is alright. It is a white bag with a blue square on the front. The square is more shaped like a diamond in a way and the writing is over the blue part in white writing.

I don't have a bag to hand but think these have around 140 calories per bag and probably the normal amount of fat as other Crisps.

A nice simple choice of Crisps for me, that has a little twist to them.